FLE

Government stakes claim to every newborn's DNA An Orwellian plan that has state and federal governments staking claim to the ownership of every newborn's DNA in perpetuity is advancing under the radar of most privacy rights activists, but would turn the United States' citizenry into a huge pool of subjects for involuntary scientific experimentation, according to one organization alarmed over the issue. "We now are considered guinea pigs, as opposed to human beings with rights," Twila Brase, president of the the Citizens' Council on Health Care, a Minnesota-based organization familiar with the progress in that state. Lawmakers in Minnesota recently endorsed a proposal that would exempt stockpiles of DNA information already being collected from every newborn there from any sort of consent requirements, meaning researchers could utilize the DNA of more than 780,000 Minnesota children for any sort of research project whatsover, Brase said. The result will be that every newborn's DNA will be collected at birth, "warehoused in a state genomic biobank, and given away to genetic researchers without parent consent – or in adulthood, without the individual's consent. Already, the health department reports that 42, 210 children have been subjected to genetic research without their consent," Brase told WND. She said although her organization works with Minnesota issues, similar laws or rules and regulations already are in use pretty much all across the nation....
Border watchers using Web cams It's not just the government doing high-tech surveillance of the border anymore. And it doesn't take a huge defense contractor and a satellite, either. Two volunteer groups, one a splinter from the well-known Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, have cameras in Cochise County pointed at the Mexican border up to 200 yards away and at busy smuggling routes. Anyone with a fast-enough Internet connection can sign up to work the cameras remotely, although one of the groups first submits volunteers to a background check. The volunteers report any sightings of smugglers or immigrants to the Border Patrol. The small-scale operations may seem quaint, but the border groups maintain that their cameras, which transmit wirelessly to the Web, have led to the arrest of hundreds of border crossers in recent months. The efforts highlight how, in the groups' view, a fairly simple system can work as well as the government's approach, which is a sophisticated, high-tech satellite-surveillance operation called Project 28. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's "virtual fence" experiment was delayed eight months by glitches, and questions linger about how well the $20 million system works. Sen. John McCain called the project "a disgrace"; another Republican congressman introduced a bill to scrap the experiment....
Drone patrols take off Four Predator B drones have become fixtures over Arizona since October 2006, and two more will join them soon, Juan Munoz-Torres, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman, said Wednesday. Once those six are in place, the agency wants Congress to fund six drones along the Canadian border and six more on Florida's Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, said Douglas Koupash, who heads Customs and Border Protection's drone program. The Predator Bs used for these missions are unarmed civilian adaptations of missile-toting drones used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each weighs five tons, has a 66-foot wingspan and can fly virtually undetected at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet, said Pete McNall, deputy director for Customs' unmanned aerial systems in the Southwest. The border agency's fully loaded, $10.5 million Predators carry long-range cameras, but even at night, operators using the drones' radar imaging and infrared capabilities can light a target with a laser visible only through the night vision goggles of helicopter crews who intercept some of the border crossers. From October 2006 through Feb. 16, the drones had helped in the apprehension of 3,857 illegal immigrants and the seizure of more than nine tons of marijuana, according to the most recent statistics available....
Military Report: Secretly 'Recruit or Hire Bloggers' A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers." Since the start of the Iraq war, there's been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs -- and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops' time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad. This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," write the report's co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning. Lt. Commander Marc Boyd, a U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman, says the report was merely an academic exercise....

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A recent speach given in San Francisco by Attorney General Michael Mukasey is creating quite a storm. In that presentation Mukasey claimed there was a pre-911 call from a terrorist safe house in Afghanistan to the U.S.. Mukasey then asserts if the President had had warrantless wiretap authority they could have saved 3,000 lives.

Glenn Greenwald has ripped into the DOJ and Mukasey's comments. Greenwald points out this alleged call was never reported to the 911 Commission (confirmed by the executive director)and that even if the call was made their was nothing in FISA to prevent the NSA from listening. So did Mukasey make this up to assist his lobbying for a bill currently before Congress? If the call was real then why wasn't it reported to the 911 Commission? Is this an instance where their was knowledge of the call but no follow up by the Feds and thus another intelligence failure? This will be interesting to watch.

These issues and many more are discussed in Greenwald's posts:
Michael Mukasey's tearful lies, Why doesn't the 9/11 Commission know about Mukasey's 9/11 story?, The DOJ comments on the Mukasey controversy